Time

[Brocktoon]

I was listening to NPR yesterday and they had a cool feature on time. The first part was kind of an introduction to General Relativity and the trippy mindfuck that it is (the faster you go, the slower time moves for you, how time is a property of space, energy and matter etc.).

The second segment questioned whether a turtle and a hummingbird experience time in the same sense. Does a humming bird think “man, I’m hauling ass!” while a turtle thinks “fuck, I wish I weren’t so slow.” Intuition says no, and so do the results of years of a particular neurologist's studies. He studied people who would periodically go into spells where they would experience time either more quickly or more slowly. For example, one subject once took 2 hours to wipe his nose. To the observer, he looked perfectly still. When the subject was questioned about what he was doing, he had no concept that he was “existing” so slowly and it wasn’t until he was presented with video of himself moving at a glacial pace for a couple hours that he was convinced (he was "thunderstruck" by the revelation). Methinks this sounds more like a biochemical phenomenon than anything else, but it invokes some cool thoughts about the nature of time and demonstrates how it’s not a linear constant but depends on the observer.

I thought the coolest part was the third segment which contained excerpts from a documentary on elite athletes. The excerpted portion contained interviews of sprinters. The runners talked about the mental process they went through prior to and after the starting gun went off. How once the gun goes off, the nature of time changed, how the sound of the crowd seemed to disappear and everything seemed to move in slow motion, but that they were entirely present in every instant of the interval.

Does time itself change for one when he achieves excellence in a pursuit? Is this what it means to be in “the zone.” When I was in college (over 10 years ago), my primary means of transportation on campus was my skateboard. There was a huge hill between my dorm and the center of campus. I would bomb that thing 20 times a week. It was fun as hell. It was on this really broad walkway with all kinds of berms and features to slide, grind and rail. I remember powersliding and being conscious of the friction between the wheels and the asphalt and making subtle adjustments to it by shifting my weight or “lightening” myself – actually thinking about how long to draw the slide out while I was in the slide.

A couple years ago I was on campus and happened to have a skateboard in my car. I could not believe what a chaotic, controlled disaster it was. It was all I could do to stay on the board and I couldn’t imagine having any sense of control moving at that speed. As a result, I felt like the slightest body motion resulted in an incredibly dramatic control input. I ended up in this very defensive crouch where my only objective was to keep my teeth and bones in tact.

Hearing that NPR piece made me reflect on my experience in a new way. On flat ground, I could still ollie on to park benches and do less technical tricks pretty consistently. The difference was with the perceived speed of the event (and given the relative nature of time, what is the difference between perceived speed and actually speed?).

I’ve experienced similar phenomena in boxing, basketball and surfing and I’ve kind of become a junkie for it. I've also spent what felt like minutes drawing something and learned I'd missed two meals. One thing is consistent, I really enjoy the sensation of time slowing down and I think I'm more fulfilled in life when it's happening with some regularity. Still trying to get there on skis.

[gonzo]

Cool stuff man. That happens to me when I haven't mountain biked for a while for sure. I call it the "fear threshold" - creeps back down on you when you don't do anything for a while.

Where did you go to college? A buddy of mine went to Stanford and had similar stories of a long hill to campus.

[bklyn]

Do you think time slowed down for the jet plane on a treadmill?

[MeatPuppet]

I’ve experienced similar phenomena in boxing, basketball and surfing and I’ve kind of become a junkie for it. I've also spent what felt like minutes drawing something and learned I'd missed two meals. One thing is consistent, I really enjoy the sensation of time slowing down and I think I'm more fulfilled in life when it's happening with some regularity. Still trying to get there on skis.

You should check out a book called Flow. It talks about this experience and the addictive qualities associated with it. It's also the opinion of the Author that regularly experiencing this state of mind is necessary for happiness. It's a good read.

[Tippster]

"Happiness" per se is unquantifiable, so the Flow author is full of shit.

I do believe in relative time, and that you can speed up your internal clock (and thus slow down the world around you to your perception.) Another example of relative time is that professional Baseball players have the ability to see the seams of the ball before they hit it.... even a slow pitch is still going 80mph.

[Odin]

Also, time - per se - is unquantifiable so therefore.... IT is full of shit!

and as you know, they say Shit happens.

so Time is everywhere.

[f2f]

i know it's not popular anymore to pretend to be reading this, but it's the (slightly outdated) modern equivalent of Sagan's Cosmos. give it a whirl:

[iceman]

I've read Hawking and I've thought about this topic a lot but it would be for the best if I shared my insightful brilliance when I was soberer.

So all this is is a bump, I guess.

[MeatPuppet]

"Happiness" per se is unquantifiable, so the Flow author is full of shit.

Would you be of the same opinion if I/he had said that a sense of purpose in life or intimate, meaningful relationships, or job satisfaction are necessary for happiness? Just because it is unquantifiable doesn't mean that we can't identify factors that impact it, or who's absence makes it difficult to achieve.

Ever lose yourself in a good ski run? Time disappeared, you lost all sense of yourself and just skied. That's "flow". The book covers what happens from a psychological, as well as a physiological perspective, when we drop into that state and perform at a level higher than we would normally be able to, as well as the conditions necessary to enter that state at will. This extends to religious experiences as well. The conditions that lead to this unique state, and the psycho/physiological response to it, are the same across the board, regardless of the discipline involved.

If I were to make a list of the top ten books that have had the most impact on my life and how I live it, not only would Flow make the list, it would probably be close to the top.

[gonzo]

I do believe in relative time, and that you can speed up your internal clock (and thus slow down the world around you to your perception.) Another example of relative time is that professional Baseball players have the ability to see the seams of the ball before they hit it.... even a slow pitch is still going 80mph.

Seeing the seams has to do with how fast the ball is spinning, not how fast it is moving through the air. If you watch a knuckballer from behind the plate or in the pen, you can see the seams even though the ball is going 75-80 because it isn't spinning. Good batters watch for the release (when the ball goes from no spin to spin) and react to what kind of pitch it is likely to be. This is why pitchers with multiple or unconventional release angles fuck with batters.

[mc_roon]

time is a fickle bitch. Most people's minds alter time when something very intense is happening. I know that time slowed down for me when i hurt my eye, and when we were skidding towards a cliff a few weeks ago. The slowing of time is cool, but the snap when it goes back to normal is even cooler. does anyone know what im referring to?

[Rasputin]

The perception of time is the attempt to measure space between events which are percieved to be separate and isolated. The truth is, that all events are concurrent and only sifted into a perception of time/space to enhance the ability to distinguish the nuances (thoughts/feelings) of the totality of being.

Though all things are always existant and present, individual spirits, which we are, chose to experience outside of the awareness of all things being concurrent and lacking in definition, to savor specific nuances, or in other words, the differentiation of form, as is drawn into existance by desire.

When we push the envelope, in whatever discipline we are called to, we are stretching thin the membrane which maintains our perception of being separate and isolated in space, and begin to connect to the awareness of our existance within the singularity.

[Brocktoon]

Do you think time slowed down for the jet plane on a treadmill?

Classic. Before I posted, I erased a reference to that thread.

You should check out a book called Flow. It talks about this experience and the addictive qualities associated with it. It's also the opinion of the Author that regularly experiencing this state of mind is necessary for happiness. It's a good read.

Picked it up at Borders yesterday.

i know it's not popular anymore to pretend to be reading this, but it's the (slightly outdated) modern equivalent of Sagan's Cosmos. give it a whirl:

Yeah, that’s an all time classic. Two other favorites from the “theoretical physics for the non-Nobel-nominee” genre are:

In Search of Schrodinger's Cat by John Gribbin
The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene

A fucking GREAT book in general that has some very interesting commentary on how relativity and quantum physics (as well as evolution and Freud’s psychoanalysis) influenced the worldview/metaphysics of the average citizen is:

A History of the American People by Paul Johnson

Cool stuff man. That happens to me when I haven't mountain biked for a while for sure. I call it the "fear threshold" - creeps back down on you when you don't do anything for a while.

Where did you go to college? A buddy of mine went to Stanford and had similar stories of a long hill to campus.

University of California at San Diego

"Happiness" per se is unquantifiable, so the Flow author is full of shit.

I do believe in relative time, and that you can speed up your internal clock (and thus slow down the world around you to your perception.) Another example of relative time is that professional Baseball players have the ability to see the seams of the ball before they hit it.... even a slow pitch is still going 80mph.

Full of Shit? C’mon, Tipp! Writing off an author based on a reader’s 25 word summary of his work? You’re more open minded and analytical than that.

time is a fickle bitch. Most people's minds alter time when something very intense is happening. I know that time slowed down for me when i hurt my eye, and when we were skidding towards a cliff a few weeks ago. The slowing of time is cool, but the snap when it goes back to normal is even cooler. does anyone know what im referring to?

I know what you’re referring to, but for me the slowing of time itself is much cooler.

[Tippster]

I stand by my oversimplification on the grounds so elegantly voiced in Rasputin's mastubatory pseudo-science summation. Bitch.

[Brocktoon]

I stand by my oversimplification on the grounds so elegantly voiced in Rasputin's mastubatory pseudo-science summation. Bitch.

Well at least you're fast. How did you know I was masturbating to Rasputin's post?

[Tippster]

You're in the military - what the hell else would you be doing?

[Brocktoon]

You're in the military - what the hell else would you be doing?

See, there's that close-minded attitude again. Maybe you're not the man I took you for. For your information, I might have been doing ANYTHING else: masturbating to the lingerie section of the PX catalogue, masturbating to Guns n' Ammo, masturbating to Japanese anime. ANYTHING. Open your goddamn eyes, man! It's a wide world.

[Tye 1on]

I can't keep up with this mensa level time talk shit after losing an hour of sleep last night.
But i did hear Neal Tyson, director of NYC's Hayden Planetarium, talking to SF's Commonweath club on his new book, Death by Black Hole. Funny guy that makes astrophyics understandable...sorta

[Rasputin]

I stand by my oversimplification on the grounds so elegantly voiced in Rasputin's mastubatory pseudo-science summation. Bitch.

I really don't know how anything I wrote could be construed as pseudo-science, rather, it was a drunken masturbatory esoteric summation.

[Tippster]

I sit corrected... with my pants around my ankles.

[Odin]

When we push the envelope, in whatever discipline we are called to, we are stretching thin the membrane which maintains our perception of being separate and isolated in space, and begin to connect to the awareness of our existance within the singularity.

"I don't think he's ready for the blanket!"

"This is you, this is me, this is paris, this is new york, this is the Eifell Tower, This is broadway and this is a hammer"

Aliterances to movies aside.....

Happiness is non quantifiable only do to the variances of human perception and the reality that most of us force on ourselves every day. Were it understood that people have a tendency to center themselves into their own consiousness to the exclusion of everything else, than we could begin to understand that our psyche's mearly exist within time and that we attempt to impose our will on something that is completely out of our control. For this simple reason, while it feels as though time slows or speeds up or is out of control, you merely exist within all places, past, present and future, there is no matter indivisible because it would be impossible to somehow separate the future self from yourself in so much as you ARE the future self.

[Tippster]

So if conditions X, Y, and Z exist then I must be happy? There's no way that X, Y, and Z can be universal.

[Odin]

So if conditions X, Y, and Z exist then I must be happy? There's no way that X, Y, and Z can be universal.

Heh, I hope you weren't talking to me?!

NO!

X Y and Z are NOT universal and to think that they are is to ignore anything and everything outside the norms of white people in the suburbs. If there was a formula to make everyone happy, why not a formula that makes everyone mindless, hippy, drones who stand around and pontificate on the meaning of uterly useless crap...... oh wait.....

anyhoo, there is no universal constant to happiness and there should NOT be a universal constant. I would hate to think that people would want to stay in some blissful oblivion that allows no personal growth, that allows no sorrow or anger or fear or accomplishment. Mind you there are people who attempt to maintain such a feat, staying in the high is a perfect example, or the flow or whatever lame attempt to quantify good feelings. The bottom line is that without suffering, without indignation, without hitting bottom you have no room for expansion in the upper ends of your life. If everything that you work for is to maintain some mental state, you ignore the 1000000 other capacities that your life could offer

I close with Huxley.

"Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities. "

and

"I want God, I want poetry, I want danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin."

[Tippster]

I blame the Flouridation of Water.

I close with Cartman:

"Maury, I am out of control. Yeah, I use drugs. I can do what I waunt, biatch! Yeah, I have sex, and I don't use protection! It's my hot body; I'll do what I waunt! I don't go to school and I kill people! What-evah! I'll do what I waunt!"

[snowsprite]

The flow book looks rather interesting...

This all reminds me of a documentary I watched once about high-performing athletes who had their brains monitored as they did their sport. At the moment of "accomplishment" their brain waves went totally blank. This was the same for a marksman shooting an arrow and a karate dude breaking a stack of bricks. The brain waves were all over the place the instant before they initiated their move, but once they did: stillness. That's the suspended animation thing, the time-slowdown I guess. It was neat.

I must be in the zone often because my brain goes completely blank a lot of the time.

Sprite